Destiny
by The Sith Virtuoso
Summary: The Mad Titan had overcome all odds to fulfill his mission only to be tested one last time. Endgame spoilers SEMI hinted...though, strictly speaking, this happens before the movie. Reviews are much appreciated.


**Author's note: **I've waited a fair few days after penning this down right after Endgame showed since I was lucky enough to get tickets on the first day. I'd have wanted to put more of comic canon Thanos, but found it difficult to reconcile the original incarnation with the brilliant one brought to life by Josh Brolin. I hope you all enjoy :)

Excelsior!

All characters property of Marvel Entertainment.

* * *

**DESTINY**

_"The hardest choices require the strongest of wills"_

* * *

"_Did you do it_?" he heard her voice say.

"_Yes_."

The lips of his child he remembered quivering, "_What did it cost_?"

One again he felt the crushing weight of what he had sacrificed.

Desolation clung to him with a lover's caress even as he spoke words that rang hollow through that endless red-gold expanse.

"_Everything_."

* * *

The great titan awoke in a cold sweat, his heart pounding.

It had been twenty-one days since his victory, when he had turned the wheel of fate irreversibly in his favor.

The moons were still shining, as were the stars. It was early morning, when the night was darkest before the dawn.

He had since retired onto this world—one he had christened The Garden—in tribute to the flourishing universe he had dreamed of for so long. There he was content to live the remainder of his life in solitude and peace.

_Solitude and peace._

He had found those two treasures in the day where there was won't but his world's sun overhead, the fresh breeze on his skin and the myriad of calls from creatures still alive and _thriving_—voices that cried out humble, happy and most of all, _grateful_.

Music to his ears.

The days since then he had spent in quiet fulfillment. It had been countless ages since he had had to do manual labor simply to eke out a life day-by-day.

It was a pleasant surprise on how full his heart would be simply in seeding the fresh earth of his farm knowing how these would grow in time, and of that indescribable sense of achievement in gathering the literal fruits of his labor.

He had been many things in his long, long life. Now he was content just to _be_.

Happiness and satisfaction he had during the daytime.

After the sunset though was a different story.

He had hoped that after the first few nights, the terrors of the dark would cease. He knew he was stronger than his fear.

He knew fear and he understood it. Fear had had no power over him. What was fear to him after all he had done and witnessed? He had watched his entire world die and grown stronger for it. His existence had been galvanized by that primal fear and made him a driving force for change in this universe.

Whole star systems had cried out and he had listened while he went about the business of correcting _that_ which they should have truly feared.

_Mercy. _

Was he not merciful?

_It was mercy_.

A simple snap of his fingers. No selection; simply random and impersonal, with regard that only half of all those drawing breath would cease to exist.

There was no pain; those who had gone never knew what had happened.

Was that not mercy?

His body was devoured by agony in the moment he had decided to fulfill his calling. Ah, pain beyond pain, but there was no price he was unwilling to pay for his vision.

Even that was nothing compared to Vormir.

Had he been a lesser man, he would have torn that accursed planet down to the last atom with his bare hands.

_Gamora, my daughter…_

He had strength enough to shatter mountains and crumble entire worlds to dust...yet when he finally had to do that which he dreaded most, he had almost failed. The weight of the deed so great and so punishing that he could not even bear to look when he took her hand in his own.

It had hurt enough realizing how badly she had misunderstood him; that she thought he had _never_ loved her. He closed his eyes to stop the tears he felt welling from within. The suffering he felt afterward was beyond what any other could possibly comprehend. He felt his heart, his mind—his _soul_, giving in. Almost surrendering to the grieving madness.

No parent should have to watch their child die, it was oft said on countless worlds throughout the ages. He had not only watched, but had been _the_ instrument of his child's doom.

If for only one cause he would call himself a monster, then it was for that reason and that alone.

The first night had been the hardest. The memories were fresh and he had woken up screaming into the dark.

On that night as well was the first time he heard _them_ whisper. Glowing like the stars overhead —all _six_ of them.

He had the most powerful weapon in existence literally at hand and knew that there were those who would want to possess it for personal gain—or worse, render his triumph null and void.

So he had decided that he would keep it; not for power, not for personal gain, but to stop others from being corrupted by it or from undoing the natural order of how the universe ought to be.

_The hardest choices…require the strongest of wills._

_You can bring her back, _the six voices said, feeling like silk on his ragged soul. Faint and ineffectual they were at first and his herculean will alone had been enough. But they were never really gone.

They simply bid their time, knowing perhaps that even he, the great titan, will have inevitable moments of weakness.

During the day it was easy, when his mind and body were at work. The night was when the maddening chorus would cajole and assault him, whispering seductive fantasies beyond his wildest dreams.

He had tried to work well into the night by the end of the first week but the voices had grown stronger and more imperative with time.

Threatening even to tempt him during the day. Their voices unintelligible, as if coming from underwater, but always there.

He denied them time and again.

_No_, he commanded, _it is done. My will is done._

The six had since been trying their best. Six faceless voices at once so alien and yet so intimate...

It would have been so easy…

_A snap of your fingers. That is all, _they whispered, _you have done it before. You can do it again._

Every night since his great victory had been a battle. But he could not part with his instrument. It had become a part of him just as they had become a part of it.

_You have the power, mighty Thanos…_

Never once in his ages of studying the nature of these ersatz aspects of existence did he come across their sentience.

Perhaps it was because no one had ever possessed _all_ the Infinity Stones as he had; and as one, _this_ was their own unique power.

Perhaps he was finally sliding into madness, his subconscious somehow becoming corrupted by the thought of so much _power_, projecting itself through the only outlet it could.

_Perhaps._

The great titan had been through countless battles, and prior to his personally hunting down the stones, he could not remember the last time he had had to struggle, and even then only in a physical sense.

That had been positively easy compared to what had been for the past few nights. Had someone told him that he would be akin to a child after his victory, frightened of the dark, he would have laughed.

_How low the mighty have fallen…_

Each night after his victory was a struggle in itself; only then did he understand the meaning that the greatest battles were waged with a mirror.

Dawn felt like a balm to his soul, a blessed respite from the horrors of the night. The dawn of that day was won't to come for a few more hours, and this was the latest in a long line of nights.

The terrors were becoming more and more intense, forcing him to wake ever earlier.

Under the dim light, he took his face in his hands, feeling more weary and tired than he had been in millennia.

The recollection of the words he spoke to the sorcerer, one of the fools who had attempted to prevent him from fulfilling his destiny, on that brief conversation on the corpse that was once his homeworld rang hollow, seemingly mocking in its countenance within his mind.

_"I finally rest and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe."_

Was this his reward for correcting the fundamental flaw of this existence?

It was unfair. All of it was unfair. In ages past, in the battles of yesterday, and certainly in the days that had come by.

The six hummed and thrummed, more alive than ever. Hideous, monstrous, abominable creatures they were. Attached to that gaudy fixture that was to him a brand to mark him for the rest of his days.

He could not take it anymore—his roar of anguish rang aloud through the Garden, as pure and primal as it was perverse and petty.

The flimsy wall of his hut gave away like paper against the monumentally powerful fist that bore the six; 'an act of mad desperation to rid himself of those grotesqueries.

His heart thundered within him, his breaths emerged rapid and labored, his eyes fixed in revulsion at the thing that was once his left hand.

He had spent eons seeking them out, viewing them as nothing more than a means to _his_ ends. He had never once suspected that _he_ may have been the means to _their _end.

He dared not think of what that might be.

_Mighty Thanos,_ the six caressed, _why do you resist?_ _We are yours to command._

The clouds of the night crackled with amethyst lightning, the winds building momentum as if heralding a storm, and time and space seemed to lose their meaning as matter all about him began to lift up weightlessly into the dark night.

_You have done so much, yet this could be just the beginning_.

The Garden then vanished from his sight…and then a great flash…

Countless ages then appeared to pass in a matter of seconds. Or was it seconds passing in ages?

He did not know, he could not even begin to care.

But he _saw_…a universe alive and happy, but one never having been subjected to his judgment. It was an eden for all.

_Old things fade, _they whispered, everywhere and nowhere at the same time, _old things die._

_But old wounds never heal…_

From what was once paradise then came a vision of hell—his first and greatest fear coming to pass millions of times over, until the very last sliver of light in the universe had been snuffed out.

All because there were those who remembered and attempted to undo his bidding.

You_ can stop it from coming to pass…_

How he was tempted…how he was so, so tempted…

Another snap…and the universe would be unmade and made again by _his _will and in _his _vision.

_No…_

He was _not _a monster. He refused to be, regardless of whether all of existence saw him as one. He had _earned_ his victory. He had _paid_ the price.

Just as he had been fair to those who had gone, so he would be to those who had been left.

_I saved them. I saved _all _of them!_

A victory achieved by cheating was no victory at all.

_I am not _yours_ to command!_

For the first time, his own voice rang louder than the six, the ghosts recoiling in _fear_ of his might. To be a savior was to walk down the path of torment, and he grimly accepted his fate even as the universe around spun into utter chaos and blackness.

Perhaps _they_ had become desperate for as sudden as the formless black haze came to be, so did it abate to reveal the shallow-ocean world under the golden red light of a black sun.

_She _was there, as pure and innocent as the day he had saved her, as pure and innocent as on that fateful day he had paid the ultimate price.

At last, the savior of the universe had faltered. He fell to his knees into the shallow water, his hands weak and empty. Utterly worthless and vulnerable in the presence of his beloved child.

_Little one. I miss you so…_

As if she could hear his thoughts, the child began to move towards him. Slowly at first, as if unsure of the man she had once called father.

The tears felt hot on his cheeks as he opened his arms, beckoning his daughter to come back to his embrace at long last.

From a slow walk did the child then _run_ knee deep in the vast ocean and leaped into his arms.

He could not help his sobbing then.

He had never been one for warmth and it was all he could do to wish he could just be like this with his beloved Gamora. To shower her with the love she had earned and been eternally denied of.

To be the father he should have been.

There were no words he could find to express his love, and while they embraced, there was nothing more in the universe but father and child.

He then admired what was supposed to be the deep brown pools of his daughter's eyes.

_What?_

It had been there for a most fleeting moment, but he could not be deceived.

For the most fleeting episode of time, his daughter's eyes had flashed in the colors of the six.

_A sham_, he realized bleakly, _this is all a sham_.

At once, he gently let the child go. Her expression perplexed and tearful.

He could not look at her…and instead turned to the accursed tool which had manifested again on his left hand with the six demons still writhing and crackling with all the power there could ever be.

It was a choice that was no choice at all.

_Forgive me, little one…_

A snap was all it took before, and a snap was all it had taken again.

In the blink of an eye, he was rent asunder by indescribable pain. Infinite power surged through him, threatening to destroy him.

But he had found strength beyond strength. Power beyond power.

Everything for one last great labor.

_I am...__INEVITABLE!_

At once the unstoppable force he had unleashed shattered under his indomitable fortitude, hurtling _inward _and back to whence they came.

And then there was not one, not six—but countless trillions of voices crying out in anguish, his own among them...

He then opened his eyes and saw the red-gold world falling apart at the seams.

The shade of his daughter looked at him with glazed eyes as everything fell into ruin.

"Dread it…" the child spoke his own words in a dead monotone.

"Run from it…"Her lively green skin then began to turn gray and brittle.

"Destiny…_still _arrives."

His precious daughter turned into ashes in the wind, and only then did the world end once more.

* * *

The forlorn hero got up gingerly from scorched earth that smelled of brimstone and ash.

The brewing storm had gone and the early morning was silent as it had been.

His arm and entire left side was a burnt and twisted ruin, as was what remained of the Infinity Gauntlet.

Would he recover?

Would there be those to remember his munificence?

It did not matter.

Nothing did except that his will can no longer be undone.

He could care less if he had perished in that last great labor.

He felt that his time was coming very soon anyway.

He would embrace death as if a bride.

_Destiny still arrives._

"Let it come," Thanos smiled wistfully at the first red slivers of the dawn from the horizon.

"Let it come."


End file.
